This is my third field season. For all that I’ve been tweaking my techniques every year, it’s all starting to seem… familiar.

There’s that crazy tree… again.

The juncos don’t seem to be used to it yet, though.

ES-A does not find this at all familiar.

It’s all new to my new field assistants, too, not to mention all the new young lives starting at our field sites.

Tree seedling with the seed still on.

Tree seedling without the seed.

Winged ant queens leaving the colony to try to start colonies of their own.

What a strange life: a brief moment of flight in the daylight, then – if she’s lucky – a life underground, sedentary, laying eggs.

Hungry junco nestlings

The mountains are new to all of them, even if they aren’t to me.

But even the landscape does change, albeit slowly.

Fallen dead tree that ripped up whole boulders when its roots pulled up.

And I still find things that I haven’t seen before.

Moth trying to pass for a puppy

Northern Flicker feather – top

Northern Flicker feather – underside

Ladybug, kind of?

The juncos are quite familiar now, but still each new nest feels genuinely new. I’ve seen many eggs before, but never these exact ones; and when they hatch, they’ll be quite new little birds.

There’s a junco nest behind this curtain of grass. Just take my word for it.

Five eggs.